Purikura Crazy

Purikura is a term of Japanese origin meaning either a type of photo booth or the product (a decorated photograph commonly measuring 1 inch by 1/2 inch) of such a photo booth.

I still remember the Print Club booth in the Cerritos Mall by Sweet Factory. For $3 you get a sheet of photo stickers with the border of your choice. You could even pick full color, black and white or sepia print. After choosing your picture from 4 or 5 tries, you wait 5 minutes for them to print out. Then you take the first sticker and stick it back on the machine as you scan the hundreds already there for pictures of your friends.

This was when... 1996? 1997? Almost 10 years later... have y'all seen these new purikura booths? They are ginormous. Some are actually "rooms" instead of booths with a built in jungle gym or flip-through patent vinyl backgrounds. Actually a purikura machine has two booths, one to take the picture in and one to decorate the picture. No more flipping through borders, you can draw, stamp, write and pretty much design these stickers from scratch now. If you can't figure out what poses you want to do, there are separate screens inside the booth that will show you what to do. Some purikura have multiple cameras that slide up and down horizontal poles. Some have wind blowing machines to blow air through your hair.

They are $9 for a sheet of stickers. Nine dollars.


There are stores dedicated to purikura.


After you take your picture, you and a buddy can pick up a pen and decorate your stickers. You can waste quite a bit of time doing this. Once Vina and Aai took 30 minutes just to decorate one sheet.

They're ridiculous.

They're expensive.

They're time-consuming.

But hell, they are a lot of fun.